Many existing email applications enable users to apply color-coded flags to received email messages. These flags are frequently used to represent a status of the email messages (e.g., red for follow up; orange for reply; yellow for to do; and so on). Some email applications also enable users to mark a message as important (e.g., with a “!”) or unimportant (e.g., with a “↓”) before the message is sent, so that when a user receives the message, the importance of the message is clearly indicated.
Emoticons are graphical icons such as “”, or textual representations of graphical icons such as “:-)”. Emoticons have become very popular through instant messaging applications, and their use has recently expanded to inclusion in email messages. For example, a user may add a smiley face emoticon after a funny sentence in an email message. Emoticons are typically designed to represent an emotion or feeling.
Emoticons can be included within an email message; follow-up flags are useful for marking different types of received email messages; and importance flags can be useful for enabling an email sender to indicate to an intended email recipient, the importance of a message. However, there is no means by which to indicate an emotion associated with an email message.